Commentary: Pro-Family Tax Policy Advocated

Federal income-tax policy has shifted sharply away from support for
families and children in recent decades, argues Allan Carlson,
president of the Rockford Institute, in the winter issue of The Public
Interest.

The 1986 tax-reform law--hailed by many "pro family" advocates for
its efforts to reduce taxes on families with children--may actually
have made things worse for them, he writes.

Mr. Carlson traces the tax treatment of family income and deductions
for children since the Congress's 1948 overhaul of the internal-revenue
code.

That law's steeply graduated tax rates, hefty personal exemptions,
and favorable treatment of the income of married couples were
advantageous to marriage and families, he maintains.

By offering incentives for married women to substitute tax-free
"home production" for taxable work income, he suggests, it "encouraged
greater family self-sufficiency, increased domesticity, and may even
have had a hand in sustaining the baby boom through the 1950's."

Since then, in his view, the tax system's support of families has
steadily declined. Tax-law writers have effectively pushed women out of
the home and into the labor force, he contends, with measures like the
day-care credit and recent alterations intended to reduce the "marriage
penalty."

He argues that such changes--and more esoteric proposals, such as
taxing the "psychic income" parents receive from their children--should
be discarded in favor of a pro-family tax code.

"The tax system should give strong preference to children as
national treasures, in a manner that affirms parental responsibility,"
he writes.

Mr. Carlson advocates the following steps: raising the personal
exemption from $2,000 to $4,000 for each child; expanding the existing
child-care credit to provide a $750 credit for all families with
preschool children; and creating a new dependent-child credit of $600
per child.

In an article in Mother Jones magazine contrasting the leadership
styles of three urban high-school principals, David L. Kirp concludes
that a single-minded focus on order is less likely to encourage student
achievement than is an emphasis on intellectual drive.

Mr. Kirp writes in the January issue that Joe Clark, of Eastside
High School in Paterson, N.J., and George McKenna, formerly of
Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles, used "tireless
exertions of command and control" to restore order to campuses ravaged
by drugs and gang violence.

But the order imposed was not accompanied by equal gains in academic
achievement, contends the author, who is professor of public policy at
the University of California at Berkeley.

Mr. Clark has won both acclaim and notoriety for ruling his school
with bullhorn and baseball bat in hand and for expelling large numbers
of students.

Yet, according to Mr. Kirp, "all the sound and fury have done little
to boost student achievement, which remains abysmal."

Mr. McKenna ended the chaos at Washington Prep by espousing a
philosophy stressing nonviolence, love, and family. His success was
chronicled in The George McKenna Story, a television docudrama.

But as at Eastside High, Mr. Kirp says, test scores at Washington
Prep have not improved.

At Central Park East Secondary School in New York City, on the other
hand, the MacArthur Award-winning principal Deborah Meier stresses
intellectual drive over control and obedience, he writes.

Unlike Eastside High and Washington Prep, Central Park East, which
opened in 1984, embodies no educational formula. "All that this venture
stands for is a wider array of school choices for families, greater
personalism in instruction, more authority to those closest to the
classroom--and, hardest to clone, a visionary for a leader," Mr. Kirp
says.

At Ms. Meier's school, he continues, "there is a commitment to know
these youngsters as minds worth sharpening and as human beings with
souls."

Ms. Meier has prevented the intrusion of drugs, sex, and violence by
creating a small, highly interpersonal community, Mr. Kirp observes.
Creating order "isn't so hard," Ms. Meier is quoted as saying.

It is still too early to measure the success of her experiment, Mr
Kirp adds--the first class will not graduate until 1991. But Central
Park East, he concludes, "holds promise: better the intimate enclave of
learning than either the plantation of fear or the factory of
love."

The Democratic Party needs to reassess long-cherished policies such
as affirmative action and desegregation-related busing if it hopes to
recapture the White House, Joseph A. Califano Jr. argues in the Jan. 8
issue of The New York Times Magazine.

"What bothers many white, middle-class voters," the former Secretary
of Health, Education, and Welfare writes, "is the Democrats' refusal to
discuss frankly the serious shortcomings of many programs aimed at
disadvantaged blacks."

As a tool of integration, busing "has been a counterproductive
failure," he contends. And affirmative action "has pried open some
important doors for blacks, but it was never conceived as a permanent
program and time is running."

The party need not abandon its commitment to economic and social
justice for blacks, Mr. Califano writes.

Instead, he suggests, it should focus on policies that work: more
effective job-training programs, greater investment in schools, higher
standards for teachers, and increased emphasis on student discipline
and academic achievement.

Mr. Califano also castigates his fellow Democrats for putting the
rights of accused criminals before those of their victims. He blames
this stand on "the influence of white liberal ideologues rather than
any concern about offending blacks."

Changes in the Presidential nominating process and the increased
ability of Democratic Congressmen to raise campaign funding without the
support of the head of the ticket have also made it more difficult for
mainstream Democrats to win the party's nomination, he says.

"Everybody who hates Graham," read the note passed around the
4th-grade classroom, "sign here." And before the teacher could
intervene, all the students in the class had signed.

According to an article in the January/February issue of Psychology
Today, students who, like Graham, are actively rejected by their
classmates may face extraordinary social and academic pressures.

Most children are liked by several of their peers at least, and
disliked by few, writes Paul Chance, who is a contributing editor of
the magazine. But psychologists estimate that between 5 percent and 10
percent of all elementary-school children have no friends--and many of
these children are actively disliked by their classmates, he
reports.

Besides suffering the pain of rejection, children who do not
interact with their peers also miss important opportunities to improve
their physical, social, and intellectual skills, Mr. Chance notes.

And he cites studies indicating that unpopular children are more
likely than others to be truant, to be held back, or to drop out of
school.

According to the article, some of these unpopular children fit the
stereotype of the schoolyard bully. Others, Mr. Chance writes, "simply
behave inappropriately"; they may do "silly things," such as belch or
stand on a table, or they may have trouble joining in others' play.

In some cases, children are rejected because they are less
attractive or have an unpopular religious or ethnic background, Mr.
Chance says, noting that both weak and gifted students are also more
likely to be outcasts.

Psychologists have attempted to help these children by strengthening
their social skills. But the psychologists have discovered that the
established biases of their classmates are difficult to overcome: Many
of the children who receive such training continue to be rejected even
when their social abilities improve markedly, according to the
article.

Over the long run, however, children thus tutored in social skills
may eventually gain acceptance by their peers or develop ties with
others who do not know their reputation, Mr. Chance says.

And because rejection is such a common problem, he concludes, some
psychologists have proposed that social skills be included in the
preschool curriculum.

Vol. 08, Issue 22

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.